Diagnosis of Unanticipated Plant Component Faults in a Portable Expert System

We describe the first-principles-based PRODIAG expert system for on-line plant-level diagnosis of component faults in thermal-hydraulic processes. This diagnostic system combines the concepts of fundamental physical principles and function-oriented diagnosis in a qualitative reasoning framework and structures these concepts into three independent knowledge bases. PRODIAG has the unique ability to diagnose unanticipated (unforeseen) component faults and can be ported across different processes/plants through modifications of only input data files containing the appropriate process layout information. Simulation tests for two plant systems with transient data generated with the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant full-scope training simulator confirm the unique capabilities of PRODIAG.